


Dialogues Of The Self

by Hellowriters



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Meeting in dreams, characters and tags will be added with each chapter, dream - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24829456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hellowriters/pseuds/Hellowriters
Summary: Dreams are often said to be an otherworldly experience.A series of drabbles about Naruto characters meeting a version of their older selves in dreams.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	1. Obtio

**Author's Note:**

> As you can see, these dream meetings can occur with characters from any point in the Naruto timeline. Enjoy!

If Obito turns up at training wearing a deep frown and with enthusiasm bordering on negative, _well then_ , it has nothing to do with the dream he had last night.

' _Who are you?'_ he had asked the man.

A man strikingly familiar, yet _so, so_ foreign, and if that bizarre foreignness had nothing to do with the scars marring the right side of the man's face, and everything to do with the look in the man's eye - for he only had one - _well then_ , Obito tried to ignore it.

' _Who am I?'_ The man had smiled wryly then, but his eye had not changed - it was stone cold and empty. Obito has once heard that your eyes are a mirror to your soul, and so the icy dread settling under his skin had made him shudder even if it was just dream. _'Who I am... is no one. I am no one.'_

Annoyance spiked in Obito's chest and his hands curled into fists at his sides. What was wrong with this _idiot_?! ' _Yeah? Well I am Uchia Obito and I will be Hokage!'_

Gone before he could even tell it had been there at all, Obito saw a flash of some indescribable emotion in the man's eye. Then it was dead again.

 _'_ _You believe that now, you believe that this world is worth it, that Rin will love you and people will acknowledge you._ _I don't know what's more foolish - you or that ridiculous dream of yours._ _'_

And it was the man's tone, so flat and dry and yet as if he knew for sure that his words were the absolute truth, that kindled the spark of fear deeply buried in Obito's heart. He suddenly felt as if he was sinking, a thousand meters underwater with a pressure that rendered his whole body immobile.

 _It's - it's not ridiculous! You'll see! I'll be Hokage!_ he had wanted to shout at the man. Hell, he had wanted to punch the man's face into a bloody pulp until he could barely recognize that eye through all the red. _That eye_. That eye that Obito sees every time he looks in the mirror.

 _His_ eye. 

If Obito avoids looking in mirrors from there on out, _well then_ , nobody can hold it against him.


	2. Itachi

"Tomorrow is it, then?"

"Yes," Itachi answers, fighting down any emotion that may be twisting in his gut, and peers cautiously at _himself_.

Himself, but older. Himself, but lighter, despite the onerous burden which is already pressing down on Itachi's shoulders, even if the worst has yet to come. This is himself. Himself, but more peaceful - or, better said, at peace?

"You seem... well," he says as much. Then tentatively, "Does this mean that tomorrow..."

The older Itachi regards him for a moment. "As well as a dead person can be. As for tomorrow..." A look of steely resolve passes over his features and Itachi _understands_. This decision has already been made, no matter right or wrong.

"Sasuke?" He asks then, despite the gnawing sensation of something permanent and irreversible which is eating slowly through his chest.

_Sasuke. His brother. Little Sasuke._

For a good while now, Itachi has known that in life, one has to sacrifice. One man for a thousand others. And if he would want to take his brother and run away, to never look back... _well then_ , that's just a dream he forbade himself from dreaming.

His older counterpart smiles wistfully, because he knows too, better even, how a life like theirs can be. "Sasuke... All of this is for our little brother. I must tell you, for a long time I thought the path I had chosen was the one I had to walk until the end, and so I did. If it was right or wrong, I cannot tell, only that at the end of the day, I realized I could have perhaps done better."

The statement doesn't sit right with Itachi. Then he has chosen wrongly?

"There is no way of truly knowing what is right or what is wrong," the other says, proof of understanding himself too well. "Actions may be important in the grand scheme of things, but do not forget that we are only humans. We are confined - so is it meant to be in our lives - and we must find our happiness, our peace and our freedom, in the little space we are offered. Make the sacrifices you have to make, but don't forget who you sacrifice for and above all, find yourself. Know who you are, and all will be good."

"You are dead." It is a statement, because Itachi knows, even now, before it has even truly begun, that only death could be his atonement. "You imply that I should choose differently."

"No," his older self replies simply. "I imply that you should look there, where it really matters, and so maybe you'll walk a gentler road than I have."

Perhaps Itachi does not fully grasp the true extent of what this older, wiser, _deader_ version of himself is attempting to deliver, but if when tomorrow comes and he must kill a piece of his heart along with every life he takes... _well then_ , he knows that, in the end, everything might turn out just a bit more hopeful than he would have let himself believe.


End file.
